p. 147

Sunday. April 18th Cloudy. In the morning Sarah, Natty and I
attended our church. Father preached.
In the afternoon we all attended. Sarah, Mary Emma and
Albert sat in the choir. Mr. Thomas Beecher preached
on the unpardonable sin. I heard him preach the
same sermon last summer and liked it then much
better than I did this time. That was preached on a
lovely summer evening to a full house and an attentive
audience by an enraptured lover just on the point of
marriage, and of course the sermon was elevated to a
corresponding height of love and romance, and accordingly
frequently wandered as far from the subject in hand as
can be imagined. Yet there was a poetry, grace and
enthusiasm about it that pleased me much.
But on this cloudy, dull afternoon with but a scanty
audience and he himself a married man of several
months standing it could not be expected that his
imagination would be worked up to so high a pitch as on
the former occasion even though he went over the same
ground and said the same things: and as it is to this
fertile fancy of his that he is chiefly indebted for whatever
interest his sermons may possess I could not help thinking
(begging his pardon) that the discourse was on the whole rather
stale and flat. So coming to this conclusion I did not listen very
attentively but consoled myself with thinking that as I had
heard it before there could be nothing lost. Albert, Mary E. Sarah and Natty wanted
to hear him again in the evening. I spent the evening at home in reading.
[Dr?]. W walked home with Sarah & I in the morning but leaving us rather abruptly we
punished him for it in the afternoon by running away from him when he attempted to join us.